WTF is Medical Air?

I'm not going to lie, this post kind of sucks. No pun intended, because medical air blows.

So here's how this question came to be and eventually led to me writing a crappy post because its air.  I have a friend who has been kicking cancer's ass for a little while but in going full Uma Thurman from Kill Bill on her cancer cells, we've spent a lot of time in the hospital, either taking her to chemo or visiting her. On one such visit, I saw something that confused the hell out of me: Medical Air

I know what oxygen is, I know air, but WTF makes air medical?

Along the wall was an nozzle for something listed as medical air. What. The. Fuck. Medical air? I thought we were over this whole miasma thing and had been for awhile but apparently not. So it turns out, medical air is actually kind of super important. That being said, its description (and therefore this post) is very short.

Medical air is a combination of two gasses: nitrogen and oxygen. It is 79% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. That's it. That's medical air.

Thanks for reading and tune in next week...

Just kidding, I'm going into a little more detail but not much. That concentration of gasses, 79% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, its pretty much the same as regular atmospheric air but what makes medical air special is what's not there. There are no contaminants, no "other" gasses like carbon dioxide, methane, argon, whatever, and the amount of moisture in it is carefully regulated. This makes it ideal for people who are in a bad place or are immunocompromised (like people going through chemo...). If you've ever gone to an area of a hospital where things were under positive pressure, what was happening was medical air was being pumped into the room so it was at a slighter higher pressure than the surrounding area, ideally keeping "bad air" away and only supplying the "good air" to the patients.

Medical air is also used a lot in operating rooms, both as something that is given to patients as part of the mixing of gasses in anesthesia and used to power any pneumatic tools the surgeon may use as part of the operation. It's standardized ingredients and cleanliness make it extremely valuable in these cases.

So that's actually the end. Short post because its still air. Not much to say. But because it's such a short post be on the look out TOMORROW for a special BONUS post all about 'MERICA in honor of the Fourth of July!